


There Will Be Time

by forestfantail



Series: Time Lord Fitz [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fitz can control time, Just what I need to believe to get through these last episodes ok?, Time Lord Fitz, makes little sense, post 7X10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:29:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25633591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestfantail/pseuds/forestfantail
Summary: Just as the team is facing their final battle with Malick, Fitz arrives displaying new time powers.Or: Fitz makes a dramatic entrance.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Series: Time Lord Fitz [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864936
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	There Will Be Time

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own anything S.H.I.E.L.D. and do not have any idea what is going to happen in the last three episodes. This story is the fantasy that is sustaining me until we actually learn what happens. Does it make sense? Probably not. But is it fun? I think so.

The stupid Malick (that’s all Jemma could think of him as) had told her that the only person who could save them, the only person he and Sibyl feared, was Fitz. And now that they stood here, on the battlefield, guns drawn and superpowers blazing, Fitz was nowhere to be found. She had sent out a message, another missive into the ether, and he had not responded. Not that she expected him to. But she had hoped. She had hoped for so long that the terror in her heart, the fear that she pushed to the farthest reaches of her mind, was just that. A thought, a feeling. Not reality. But here, at the last stand of S.H.I.E.L.D., beside the people she had loved and worked with for so long, she gave up trying to pretend. He wasn’t here, and he wasn’t going to be. He was lost to her forever.

The irony was that she knew this, knew it without a shadow of a doubt, at the moment that the entirety of her family prepared to die to keep her from knowing. To keep the implant untouched and whatever secrets it hid from herself and the enemy. They stood in formation before her, Daisy and Coulson in the lead, facing the crowd of villains crossing the grass to meet them. They were in the field outside the Lighthouse, no Zephyr, no Quinjet, and no escape. Nathaniel Malick was striding toward them like a hungry cat, his minions nipping at his heels like a pack of hyenas. There must have been hundreds of them. God they were annoying.

“We want to know what she knows,” Malick the Idiot was saying.

Daisy told him that no, of course they’d never give up Simmons. She said some other heroic stuff. Jemma wasn’t really listening. How many times had they been in moments like these—back against the wall and no way out? Yet they always survived. This time, though, this time felt different. This felt like the end.

Fitz should have been here, she thought. If only to see it, if only to hold her hand at the end. She touched the back of her neck, where the implant was a rigid line under her skin. She wouldn’t remove it now, not for Malick. Not even in exchange for her friends’ lives, if he offered to spare them. He’d be lying anyway.

She wouldn’t remove it because she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to remember exactly how he must have died. Her Fitz. She would die to keep this secret, and she would be rid of this pain.

That didn’t mean the others had to die, though. Perhaps she could stop the battle. They would still have to defeat these clowns, but it didn’t have to be like this—a fight to the death that they would not win. If they didn’t feel a need to protect her, they could escape. Yo-Yo could run away. Daisy could quake herself into the sky. They could live to fight another day. The only problem here was her. The fact that she was alive.

Jemma had a gun in her hand. It wasn’t an I.C.E.R.; she had stolen it from Garrett when she and Deke had escaped from the Zephyr. It was a real gun, with real bullets. She could feel how cold and heavy it was in her hand. She could end this now, before a single one of them died. Call it an act of cowardice. She wasn’t strong enough to know the truth about Fitz, and she wasn’t brave enough to watch all of her friends die for her, one by one.

They were talking more up front, normal bad guy banter stuff. The Stupid Man sure did like to talk. She unlocked the safety on the gun and started to lift it ever so slowly. And that’s when she saw it.

A shimmer of blue sparks in a patch of gray sky above their heads. She blinked. It must have been a trick of light, or an unexpected burst of lightning. And then she saw a figure, crackling into form in a spray of blue light. He dropped from the sky as if born from it, dressed in a white cloak and with his hand raised and arcing in front of him. He fell in slow motion and landed on his feet in the grass between the Idiot and Daisy. All conversation ceased.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. And just as Malick opened his mouth to respond, Fitz waved a hand before him and the entire pack of villains froze where they stood. He looked over his shoulder at the team. “This one likes to talk a lot, doesn’t he?”

“You have no idea,” said Daisy. She sounded so happy she might cry. “Fitz, what the hell?” She moved to hug him, as did some of the others, but he shook his head.

“Have to focus.” He turned back to the herd of wild animals they were facing. Jemma could hear the strain in his voice. He was controlling them somehow, with his hand still raised. Malick’s fingers were starting to twitch, and few of his followers were starting to move incrementally toward them.

“If you’d like to end this slowly, you’re going to have to act fast,” said Fitz.

“No problems there,” said Yo-Yo. She took off, and various anarchists began tumbling to the ground bound and gagged. The rest of the team sprinted into action, knocking out foes who moved as though underwater. They looked like they were trapped in time.

Fitz was still standing facing the battle, a battle which would very soon be over before it had even begun. He was shaking with effort, and Jemma was now alone behind him. She walked closer to him. She was afraid to touch him, afraid to distract from whatever he was doing. She could see the way his hair grew in a swirl at the nape of his neck, hair that was just beginning to curl. It had gotten longer since she had last seen him. Well, she didn’t remember the last time she had seen him, but she knew it was different. It wasn’t the only thing about him that had changed.

Mack called out “last one?” and Coulson yelled “think so.” The field was full of tied up and handcuffed prisoners. Prisoners who still could barely move.

Fitz let out a huge exhalation and dropped his hand. Immediately the anarchists began writhing in their bonds and yelling choice epithets. Malick had some colorful things to say, before Daisy shoved a torn strip of his ugly coat in his mouth. “Save it,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”

Jemma grabbed Fitz, who stumbled backward. He shook his head and then straightened himself. “That was a big one.”

“A big what?” asked Jemma.

Fitz seemed startled to hear her voice, and he looked at her for the first time. She had a hold of his arm, and he was so close she could smell his scent, the warm and slightly spicy aroma that only belonged to Fitz.

“I came for you,” he said.

“I can see that,” she said. She smiled. (How long had it been since she had smiled?)

“What the hell kind of voodoo magic was that, Turbo?” asked Mack. He and the rest of the team were walking towards them. Well, most of them were walking; Deke was running. He shoved the prisoner he was escorting to the ground with the others they had collected and grabbed Fitz.

“Bobo!” he said. Fitz gave Jemma a wide-eyed look over his shoulder but reached up to pat Deke’s back.

“Good to see you,” said Fitz.

Deke looked thrilled, and Jemma smiled at them both. Her face might break from smiling.

Deke explained to Fitz how he’d started a band and shot Malick (not this Malick but this Malick’s dad) and how he hadn’t filed any patents at all because Mack had told him not to and how he was a real S.H.I.E.L.D. agent now and how he had always protected Nana and never let anything happen to her just the way Fitz would have and—

Fitz put his hand on Deke shoulder and suddenly he stopped talking. “Just a little slower,” Fitz said. He let go of Deke’s arm, and Deke gasped, like he’d been holding his breath.

“How did you do that?” he didn’t sound upset, just impressed.

“How did you do any of that?” asked Daisy. “What is up with you?”

Fitz looked around at their faces. “First I think we need to deal with the prisoners,” he said. “We still have the Chronicom attack to prepare for. There’ll be plenty of time for explanations later.”

The team began collecting prisoners and leading them toward the Lighthouse. Mack picked up Malick, who had gone still on the ground.

Fitz looked at Deke. “Thanks for all you’ve done, Deke,” he said. “I’m proud of you.” Deke’s face lit up like a child on Christmas morning. He gave Fitz another hug and hid his face as he walked away. Jemma suspected he might be crying.

Fitz gave Jemma a grin and a look that said “impressed?” Couldn’t he just be nice to Deke without looking for approbation? She rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, you’re such a sweet grandpa.”

He wrinkled his nose in distaste—he really didn’t like being called Grandpa—and took her hand. “I came for _you_ ,” he said.

“You said that,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “You really are trying to impress me, aren’t you?”

“Have I?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again. A few feet in front of them Malick had slipped out of Mack’s arms. He quaked apart his handcuffs, and the two men struggled before Malick rose, his gun in his hand. He aimed it at Fitz, and Jemma’s world stopped. She threw herself in front of Fitz just as he turned toward the sound of a gunshot. Fitz caught her as she collapsed in his arms. She couldn’t feel anything below her neck, but there was a warm trickle of blood spilling from her mouth.

Fitz’s face was frozen in shock, staring at her, and then his eyes turned to blue flame. Sparks flew from the tips of his hair, and he raised one hand in the air.

The world began to reverse. Jemma flew back up to a standing position, and a bullet left her body and whipped across the field and into the barrel of Malick’s gun. Malick returned to being cuffed and restrained by Mack, and then Fitz lowered his hand.

“You really are trying to impress me, aren’t you?” asked Jemma. She heard sounds of a tussle and looked up to see Mack wrestling with Malick, who was using his stolen quake powers to grab his gun. Just as Malick jumped up weapon in hand, Fitz grabbed the gun Jemma still held, safety off, and pointed it at Malick’s face. Fitz shot Malick between the eyes, and he crumpled to the ground.

Jemma shivered. “That was a close one,” she said. Fitz nodded, still staring at Malick lying dead on the ground. “It was almost like you knew he was going to try to shoot you,” she said.

Fitz looked up from his daze and took her hand. “Let’s get you somewhere safe, yeah?”

Jemma saw a spark of blue light pass from his hand to hers. “And you can explain to me what’s happened to you,” she said. “How you can do all of this.” She gestured to the field of prisoners. To the dead man that Mack was now lifting over his shoulder.

Fitz nodded. “There’ll be time for that,” he said. He held her hand tighter. “They’ll be time for everything now.”

**Author's Note:**

> No idea how Fitz got these powers or how they work. It would be cool, though, right?
> 
> Also, does it come across that Jemma doesn't remember being shot after Fitz reversed time? I can't tell. (This is why it would be handy to have a beta, but alas this is all me.)


End file.
